3 Big college football questions and more bowl-selection fallout

A version of this story appeared on NJ.com by Tom Luicci of The Star-Ledger

THREE QUESTIONS

Is this the year the SEC's six-year stranglehold on the national championship ends?

The folks who know best -- Las Vegas oddsmakers -- have already pegged Alabama as a TD-plus favorite over Notre Dame, and that makes sense. The Tide leads the country in rushing defense and total defense, QB AJ McCarron is No. 1 nationally in passing efficiency and Eddie Lacy is a solid runner. But there's something about this Irish team that suggests an upset is well within its reach. There's the defense. There's the improved play of QB Everett Golson. And there's the feeling that despite all of 'Bama's impressive stats, this is not a dominant Tide team of recent vintage.

Which team emerged as the biggest loser from the final weekend of the regular season?

No doubt it's 10-2 Oklahoma. The Sooners needed two things to happen to earn a BCS bowl bid. They needed to win at TCU (which they did) and they needed some help with all non-automatic qualifiers finishing outside the top 16 in the final BCS rankings. The latter didn't happen when Northern Illinois earned a BCS bowl at-large bid, putting Louisville in the Sugar Bowl (where the Sooners could have been) and the Huskies against Florida State in the Orange Bowl. So even though its only losses were to Kansas State and Notre Dame, Oklahoma -- a fringe Top 10 team -- was relegated to a second-tier bowl.

Should the NCAA have granted 6-7 Georgia Tech a waiver to play in a bowl game just as it did UCLA last year?

Let's be realistic here: BCS conferences rule college football and if they need a break they get one at the expense of the non-BCS leagues. So because North Carolina and Miami are serving bowl bans, the woeful ACC was running out of bowl-eligible teams, with only five if Georgia Tech wasn't granted the waiver. There were enough teams bowl-eligible (71) to fill all the games without Georgia Tech, but the NCAA essentially ruled that the Yellow Jackets were "punished" by having to play in the ACC championship game. So high-scoring Louisiana Tech paid the price.